Two years after suffering through a 110-loss season, the Arizona Diamondbacks are spraying champagne and heading to the National League Division Series.
They feel like they belong, too.
“In ’22, you kind of saw the shift toward the end of the year, and then we came in this year and this is what we expected to do,” Zac Gallen said on Wednesday after he pitched the Diamondbacks to a 5-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers and a sweep of their wild-card series. “We expected to be playing in October.”
Photo: AFP
It is the first Division Series for the franchise since 2017. The Diamondbacks take on National League West champions the Dodgers in the opener of their best-of-five series tomorrow in Los Angeles.
National League Central champions the Brewers have dropped nine of their past 10 playoff games, a stretch that started with their Game 7 home loss to the Dodgers in the 2018 National League Championship Series.
“The playoffs are a tough animal to conquer,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “They are. Unfortunately, we have not.”
Ketel Marte put Arizona ahead for good with a two-run single during a four-run rally in the sixth inning as Milwaukee right-hander Freddy Peralta faded after a strong start. Gallen allowed two runs in the first inning, and then sailed through the rest of his six innings.
The sweep was another step in a rapid climb for the Diamondbacks.
Arizona’s 52-110 record in 2021 tied the Baltimore Orioles — another team currently in the playoffs — for the MLB’s worst record that year. The Diamondbacks went 74-88 last season.
Now they are in the playoffs thanks to Taiwanese-American outfielder Corbin Carroll’s breakthrough rookie season, as well as stellar performances by Gallen and Merrill Kelly atop the rotation.
“Considering what we’ve walked through and the dark times that we had, this is a pretty special moment,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “There’s a lot of emotion inside of this organization, inside of this clubhouse right now.”
Arizona showed their grit by rallying each of the past two nights. They erased an early 3-0 deficit against Corbin Burnes to win 6-3 in Game 1. They trailed 2-0 on Wednesday and were hitless for the first 4-2/3 innings.
The only other teams to win their first two post-season games after trailing each by multiple runs are the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays and the 2009 New York Yankees.
“You’re down like that, you can’t get back into the game with one swing, right,” Carroll said. “You’ve got to have a full team bought in willing to take quality at-bats. We had that both nights.”
One swing from Alek Thomas sure helped, though. Thomas gave the Diamondbacks their first hit when he homered on a 2-0 changeup from Peralta in the fifth inning.
“I think maybe my at-bat maybe changed a little bit of his flow,” Thomas said.
Arizona took the lead in the sixth inning as Peralta and Abner Uribe faltered on the mound.
Geraldo Perdomo drew a leadoff walk and moved to third on Carroll’s double, a broken-bat shot that got past first baseman Carlos Santana and went down the right-field line. Marte singled home both runners and advanced to second on the throw to the plate.
Tommy Pham then greeted Uribe with a single to right that put runners on the corners. One out later, Jose Herrera walked to load the bases. Uribe threw a wild pitch that brought home Pham and then allowed an RBI single to Lourdes Gurriel Jr before departing with the Diamondbacks ahead 5-2.
The Brewers tried to put together a late rally, but an Arizona bullpen that was criticized earlier this season closed it out. Arizona’s relievers combined for 9-1/3 scoreless innings in the series.
Milwaukee loaded the bases with one out in the eighth inning, but 26-year-old rookie Andrew Saalfrank preserved Arizona’s 5-2 lead with some stellar relief work.
When Sal Frelick hit a comebacker to the mound, Saalfrank threw Christian Yelich out at the plate. Willy Adames then hit a shot up the middle, but Marte was positioned perfectly behind second base and stepped on the bag for the final out.
The Brewers had runners on second and third after Yelich’s two-out double in the ninth inning, but Paul Sewald struck out William Contreras to end the series.
“I think the bullpen has been our MVP [most valuable player] the last month or so, and I think it’s the part of our team that’s kept us in a lot of games,” Gallen said.
Elsewhere, all the other wild-card series also ended in sweeps as the Rangers routed the Rays 7-1, the Twins blanked the Blue Jays 2-0 and the Phillies thrashed the Marlins 7-1.
Additional reporting by staff writer
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
RSS